{"id":627177,"date":"2026-06-08T07:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T07:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627177\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T07:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T07:56:14","slug":"jemaine-clement-on-age-gap-comedy-alice-and-steve-dancing-to-abba-with-matt-berry-and-separating-the-art-from-the-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627177\/","title":{"rendered":"Jemaine Clement on age-gap comedy Alice and Steve, dancing to ABBA with Matt Berry, and separating the art from the artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Wearing dark double denim and a white T-shirt, with thick black Hockney-esque glasses balanced on his nose, Jemaine Clement walks into the lounge of a smart London hotel and immediately points to the medley of ornamental headwear hanging behind me. \u201cYou should put that on,\u201d he remarks, gesturing towards a gentleman\u2019s top hat. \u201cIt\u2019ll really suit you.\u201d <\/p>\n

A friend, his fellow New Zealander Cliff Curtis<\/a>, one of Hollywood\u2019s leading M\u0101ori actors, once said of Clement that he just looks sideways and for some reason, it\u2019s hilarious. Watching him adapt to these plush surroundings \u2013 a giant chandelier, striped marble, towering delphiniums \u2013 I think Curtis was exactly right. \u201cSometimes it just feels funny to do a little expression,\u201d Clement says, with a little expression. \u201cMaybe I rely on them too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 52-year-old is laconic and softly spoken; his laugh reduces his eyes to narrow lines. There is something about his mouth \u2013 the way his lips occasionally purse \u2013 that feels both conspiratorial and mischievous. That face, over the past three decades, has become synonymous with a very particular brand of deadpan comedy. There was Flight of the Conchords<\/a>, the show featuring the folk-parody duo Clement established with Bret McKenzie, which became an HBO phenomenon. Then there was What We Do in the Shadows<\/a>, the glorious vampire flatshare mockumentary turned franchise. <\/p>\n

He has also been a marine biologist in the last two Avatar films, and was a scene-stealing auctioneer in last year\u2019s A Minecraft Movie. Now there is Alice and Steve, Disney\u2019s sharp new six-part comedy-drama, in which he plays a recently divorced celebrity hairstylist who begins sleeping with his best friend\u2019s 26-year-old daughter. <\/p>\n

On the page, the character seems very much a \u201cvillain\u201d, says Clement. But look beyond the age gap and there is tenderness, too. As Steve, Clement is a study in nuance, hitting a sweet spot of ambiguity. He\u2019s a man for whom you are never quite sure whether to root. Played without a hint of sleaze, this is a guy chasing love and happiness \u2013 but down the most ruinous of avenues. <\/p>\n

Made by the producers of Baby Reindeer and garlanded with three awards at the Canneseries festival, Alice and Steve is wrong-footing and rigorously unsentimental. With echoes of the first series of hit Netflix show Beef, which Clement loves, it\u2019s also an arms race of petty revenge, the former friends laying waste to each other\u2019s lives. Opposite Clement, Nicola Walker, that doyenne of the British detective drama, is spirited and vituperative as Alice, reeling off voice notes that brand Steve \u201ca piggy-eyed, big-nosed, ugly f***ing paedo loser\u201d.<\/p>\n

As a pale-skinned M\u0101ori person, I felt like a spy as a kid<\/p>\n

Given Clement is twice the age of Yali Topol Margalith, the actor who plays Alice\u2019s daughter Izzy, the presence of an intimacy coordinator was a relief. While the sex scenes take place off screen, the kissing does not, and Clement is grateful that someone was there to choreograph it. \u201cIn the pre-Weinstein era, we were expected to improvise those things,\u201d he says. \u201cUsually the director\u2019s been yelling at me, \u2018No, go for it!\u2019\u201d Far from \u201cruining the spontaneity\u201d, the planning put him at ease. \u201cI was more relaxed knowing what we were going to do, rather than having to make it up.\u201d Being the elder of the two, he had assumed that he would be the one doing the reassuring. Margalith had other ideas. \u201cShe made it very easy for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one of the series\u2019 best scenes, Alice \u2013 having exhausted most other modes of sabotage \u2013 tries to expose Steve in front of her daughter and her friends by steering the conversation towards Woody Allen<\/a>. She knows Steve adores his films, despite the actor-auteur\u2019s reputation having taken a dive \u2013 particularly among younger generations \u2013 because of child abuse allegations he has always denied. Plus there\u2019s the fact that he began a relationship with his then partner Mia Farrow<\/a>\u2019s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, when he was 56 and she was 21. Alice\u2019s little trap is perfectly vicious.<\/p>\n

\"MindMind the gap? Clement and Yali Topol Margalith as Steve and Izzy in \u2018Alice and Steve\u2019 (Disney+)<\/p>\n

While Steve has no trouble separating the art from the artist, Clement sees the funny side of Allen apologists. \u201cPeople say it\u2019s his daughter!\u201d he says, adopting a tone of mock incredulity. \u201cIt\u2019s not his daughter!\u201d He returns to relative sincerity. \u201cEven since we filmed it, Allen\u2019s been revealed to have been friends with Jeffrey Epstein. That\u2019s another layer that wasn\u2019t there a year ago.\u201d <\/p>\n

What about Michael Jackson<\/a>? Despite the sexual abuse allegations levelled against the man branded the King of Pop, Jackson\u2019s popularity proved impregnable; the recent film Michael <\/a>\u2013 criticised for skating over those very accusations \u2013 is on track to become the highest-grossing music biopic ever made. Clement hasn\u2019t listened to Jackson since watching the Channel 4 documentary Leaving Neverland, which laid out the allegations in harrowing detail. Or rather, he listens, but only to the part of Jackson\u2019s catalogue that is left untarnished. \u201cWhen he\u2019s a kid,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut otherwise I\u2019ve deliberately not put him on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TakingTaking off: Bret McKenzie, Clement and Rhys Darby in \u2018Flight of the Conchords\u2019 (Hbo\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n

For Clement, Steve is the latest in a run of louche, morally compromised characters. He played a professor who seduces his student in the 2020 comedy I Used to Go Here, and a hippy sex guru in 2022\u2019s Nude Tuesday. Does he seek these parts out? Not consciously, he says. If anything, he sees a different pattern entirely. \u201cOne year I was in six things, and they were all doctors and professors. In Avatar, I\u2019m a biologist. I\u2019d just done Legion, where I was a scientist of some unnamed science. Everything for a while was professors.\u201d Maybe it\u2019s the way he looks. \u201cI\u2019ve had people on the street say, \u2018You just look like a writer.\u2019 Usually when I\u2019m wearing a cardigan.\u201d <\/p>\n

Not that he objects to the typecasting, given that 80 per cent of his job, he reckons, is him wrestling with scripts. \u201cPeople know me as an actor, but I spend much more time writing.\u201d That this trend has emerged, he adds, is down to a \u201clack of imagination\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Who could play this doddery old man? Oh, the guy who played the doddery old man before.\u2019\u201d At least Steve marked a sort of departure. \u201cI\u2019d never played a hairstylist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FeudingFeuding friends: Alice (Nicola Walker) and Adam (Clement) in the new six-part series (Disney+)<\/p>\n

Clement was born in Masterton, a provincial town 60 miles north of Wellington, the eldest of three brothers raised by his M\u0101ori mother and grandmother in what he calls an arty, working-class family. He was between two worlds, at home in neither. \u201cAs a pale-skinned M\u0101ori person, I felt like a spy as a kid,\u201d he reflects. That duality has trailed him into the work. <\/p>\n

He has turned down M\u0101ori roles, he explains, on the grounds that he doesn\u2019t look M\u0101ori enough. One was the beloved New Zealand comedian Billy T James, visibly M\u0101ori in a way Clement is not. Reading the script, he learnt that James, as a boy, had been made to sit apart from the white patrons in the cinema \u2013 an experience Clement would have been spared. \u201cIf I went by myself, I\u2019d be allowed with the white people,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I went with my grandma, I\u2019d be in the M\u0101ori section.\u201d Be that as it may, he believes his comedy is an extension of his heritage. \u201cStorytelling was a big part of the culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

His career started almost by accident. Flight of the Conchords<\/a> \u2013 formed when he and McKenzie were at university \u2013 were conceived chiefly as a way to learn the guitar. Both men dropped out around the same time; left to their own devices in a flat shared with eight studying housemates, they wrote songs instead. And what songs: fourth-wall-breaking pastiche delivered with a po-faced earnestness, among them the seduction anthem \u201cBusiness Time\u201d and the brilliantly daft \u201cHiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros\u201d. Their first gig, played to a near-empty Wellington bar, brought what little house there was down. Nearly 30 years on, the Conchords have sold out arenas, including multiple nights at London\u2019s O2.<\/p>\n

\"LyingLying in state: Clement as Vladislav in \u2018What We Do in the Shadows\u2019 (Commission\/Kobal\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n

Threaded throughout his career is Taika Waititi, the Oscar-winning director of Jojo Rabbit whom he befriended as a student (and worked with most notably on What We Do in the Shadows). Once, Clement hired him; now, more often than not, it\u2019s the other way round. \u201cHe\u2019s the elder brother who tells me what to do,\u201d he says. \u201cHe suffers no fools \u2013 even though he is one, in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKenzie, by contrast, gravitated towards music. As well as releasing two solo albums, he wrote songs for The Simpsons and for 2011\u2019s The Muppets, the latter earning him an Academy award for the power ballad \u201cMan or Muppet\u201d. There was a time, Clement admits, when he felt left out, but the envy has since mellowed into something mutual. \u201cI wish I could do music more,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd he wishes he was making TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all that, Wellington, still his base, is where he would rather be. He spent four months in Notting Hill making Alice and Steve, and arrived determined to throw himself at London, to see shows and hear bands. It lasted about two weeks. \u201cThen I was back to staying home alone,\u201d he says, happily. <\/p>\n

The one excursion that stuck was ABBA<\/a> Voyage, the holographic concert in east London, which he saw with the actor Matt Berry<\/a>. Twice. Berry, a friend and fellow ABBA obsessive, had proposed they take the seated section rather than the dancefloor near the stage. But as soon as they sat down, Berry knew it was a mistake. \u201cHe insisted, \u2018We\u2019ve got to stand up there.\u2019\u201d So they booked more tickets and went to see it again.<\/p>\n

Soon he\u2019ll fly home, where a new science-fiction pilot awaits. What is it about? He can\u2019t tell me. The lips purse, and he looks sideways. For some reason, it\u2019s hilarious. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[71525,10194,212579,6491,63355,6494,309,96,44184,185018,11237,212580,184837,6500,2207,199069,6487,123861,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-627177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-arts-culture-and-entertainment","tag-avatar-fire-and-ash","tag-butlers-wharf","tag-celebrities","tag-central-london","tag-color-image","tag-england","tag-entertainment","tag-film-industry","tag-headshot","tag-horizontal","tag-jemaine-clement","tag-london-england","tag-one-person","tag-people","tag-photo-call","tag-photography","tag-pier","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}